Essay on compassion

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Has references to India and China

http://www.guardian.co.uk/animalrights/story/0,,1957814,00.html

Creatures of compassion

 

 

We don't need to make a choice between kindness to animals and care for

humankind

 

*Roy Hattersley

Monday November 27, 2006

The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>*

 

I was very worried about the dogs. Not dog, dogs. Buster was " quartered safe

out here " like the enviable soldiers in Rudyard Kipling's Gunga Din. I, on

the other hand, was off to " India's sunny clime " . It was the dogs of Delhi

that worried me. To be more precise, I took it for granted that they would

be scrofulous, malnourished and abused, and I worried about how I would

react to the sight of so much misery. I come from a long line of canine

masochists who tortured themselves about imagined cruelty. My mother had no

doubt that any dog not under her care was starved and badly treated. As a

result, she constantly found dogs that were not lost and fed dogs that were

not hungry. I do not make the same perverse assumptions. But it seemed

unlikely that feral Indian dogs would be in peak condition.

 

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In fact, most of them were chipper. They looked well fed. Their tails were

erect and, as far as I could tell, their noses were cold and wet. Having

forgotten my rabies injection, I was unable to confirm the second part of my

diagnosis. But as well as being confident about their condition, I realised

what brought it about. If there are anti-litter laws in India they are not

enforced with draconian rigour. Dogs scavenge merrily among the piles of

refuse. They never find a rubber bone or squeaky ball. But I suspect that,

like the Indian people, they prefer impoverished freedom to servile

prosperity.

 

I could have transferred my anguish to the caged chickens that waited to be

killed and cooked, the hobbled donkeys, or the sheep that had become the

halal meat that hung in the Muslim butchers' shops. But after a couple of

Indian days I began to re-examine my emotional priorities. Children pick

over the garbage alongside the dogs. Outside Lucknow railway station, ragged

girls - with naked babies in their arms - begged for coppers. For the first

time in my life I wondered if money donated to the RSPCA could be better

spent.

 

On the platform in Lucknow I came to the conclusion that there is no need to

make a choice between kindness to animals and care for humankind. A guide -

in individual attendance on a tourist with expensive luggage - thought it

necessary to protect his charge from every sort of intrusion. So he

threatened a crippled beggar with his clenched fist and kicked a bitch -

visibly a recent mother - that sniffed at one of the leather suitcases. He

convinced me that we do not have to ration a limited supply of compassion.

We can spread it about in the knowledge that it will grow with use. And vice

versa. Show me a man who beats his dog and I will show you a man who would

beat his wife if he could get away with it.

 

Let us sidestep the question about whether or not both crimes are of equal

magnitude and agree that brutality is likely to be indivisible. It is no

coincidence that China, a nation that tortures bears and clubs unwanted dogs

to death in the street, also executes more convicts than the rest of the

world put together. As with nations, so with people. The last parliamentary

session's animal welfare bill and the abandonment of plans for a national

cull of badgers were not concessions to a freakish minority. They were

affirmations of the sort of society we want to be and the sort of men and

women we hope will make it up. Although animals cannot have rights, humans

have responsibilities. And we cannot ignore them with the excuse that we are

concentrating on something more important. Nature may be red in tooth and

claw, but compassion and understanding is what makes humans a higher form of

animal.

 

I shall try to remember that when Buster and I are reunited. For, I am told,

after half a day's apparent sadness he settled down, happy to be at home

with another of his admirers. I shall not quote Noel Coward's " I hope you've

missed me as I've missed you since ... " , because I know my hope has not

been realised. Instead I shall turn to Christina Rossetti: " Better by far

you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad. " I

smile just to think of him.

 

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